Unemployment Numbers. They are Up, Down, Sideways. Who Cares!By Admin

May 11, 2010

Enough is enough!

Let’s simply look at it this way: More people are out of work now than 2 years ago. People are getting hired again. Business is picking up. The government is hiring. People and businesses are cautious. The economy is good and bad, depends upon the business you are in, depends upon who you are.

Any numbers about employment and unemployment, job seekers, the job seekers who gave up, the future job seekers who are graduating… those numbers that released are lies.

Governments want to control panic and growth. News media needs some juicy stuff to publish so they can sell ads. Special interest groups want to and will skew numbers to make a point. Bad sells, good is boring.

Here is the real scoop:

A Lot of good people need jobs. Some are poor interviewers and won’t get the job they could. Some are lazy and won’t get a job until later. Some good people don’t care about getting a job. Financially they don’t have to work. Someone is supporting them, or they are living in a group and their unemployment insurance pays enough to float them. Some consider unemployment a paid vacation.

Some people don’t give a damn. Some are bad people and collect unemployment while robbing stores or homes. Some are in jail, some are on their way to jail. More need to be.

Some are completely unemployable. There are severe ex-cons, drug addicts, alcoholics or social misfits. Some are simply bums. Some are bums and know it, some don’t even know it.

The influx of people to the job market when hiring starts to pick up is a lie. If people want or have to work, they look for a job. Period. Maybe having unemployment checks running out has more to do with it than hiring going up. Ya think?

Here are the real truths, followed by numbers:

Good, solid people who will work hard, all day, all their lives…are hard to find. Harder today than two years ago. It is easier to fool people today than two years ago about your work ethic, until they see it in action or inaction.

More people today than ever before have built-in limitations to success: what they will do and won’t do. They will do just enough to get by. We teach it in society. We teach people to slow down and take it easy. We teach them to have a longer leisure life and shorter work week.

People expect less work and more fun or leisure than two years ago. Look what sells today: Fun, Games, Booze, vacations and short cuts.

People are more self-centered today than before: It is really all about the self. ME ME, ME, ME. The kids today are all about entertainment of themselves.

Fridays are for wind-down, not up-work. Take a look around. Jeans, Tees, quiet. Social media free for all. Heck there is even a special activity on Twitter for Fridays! Get ready for the weekend. “Damn, ya worked 24 hours so far this week, time to slow down a bit before the weekend”.

There are more jobs unfilled today than there are good people. There are more jobs today than there are good people who have properly prepared themselves to do well in their careers.

The truth is we deserve what we are getting right now. We created a sand foundation. We allowed business to be built on cards, and we built our careers on what little we could get away with.

Here’s what the employment numbers should really reflect:

50% of the people want to work. 50% of those who have jobs really do. 50% of people would stay home if they could, the other 50% don’t care, about anything except themselves. 10% of the people who have jobs want to do a good job, the other 90% simply want to do enough to get a check. 75% of people who work, work harder at their social life than they do their jobs. 5% of all people who work REALLY want to do well, but the other 80% hold them back. The 15% we didn’t count, can’t be found. 75% of all people begin looking at the clock one hour after they arrive for work. 90% of all people are prepared to leave work one hour before work ends.

98% of HR people stop reading resumes after they receive the 30th one of more than 100. Only 5% of all resumes get a response. 95% are ignored by people who say they care about others. 50% of those will laugh at a resume, even though the resume represents a human being. 75% of job descriptions in ads are wrong. The other 25% are really wrong. 90% of job ads don’t even contain a job description, they contain a wish list of credentials that typically have nothing to do with being successful in the job. 95% of all people responding to ads think the HR people involved with those ads ruin the good name of their company by not responding. 98% of all HR people are sure they are too busy to do something that has no ROI like respond to a resume that is not a great fit. 70% of all hiring authorities have no clue what “Employment Branding” is and how it relates to their market share.

75% of all hiring authorities have no idea how to hire the best person. They truly believe that a job description and a profile to be hired are the same. 50% of those people have no training in hiring. Of those, 25% are too scared of interviewing to ask for help. The other 50% read an article on it, and are experts. The other 25% just do it.

95% of all resumes have lies. 95% of all job descriptions are 10 years old or are inaccurate. The other 5% have nothing to do with being productive. 5% of all resumes are written by professionals. 25% are written by relatives and 85% of resumes are hopeful descriptions of what people wished they would have done. Heck, they even meant to do all that, but didn’t have time. 90% of all resumes have a typo. 90% of all HR people will find 80% of all typos, and 40% will discount resumes that have one.

95% of people lie about salary and earnings. 25% of those people are 10% off, 50% are 20% off. 10% of all people don’t realize that 95% of all salaries are not in round numbers, yet 85% of all people quote their earnings in round numbers. Only 2% of all people will actually know EXACTLY what they earned last year (Tax form earnings). 90% of those are not CPA’s.

75% of all people leave “temp” jobs off their resumes. 90% of all people with temp job history leave off 50% of their temp jobs.

10% of the people you interview will do a great job for you, but we only hire 50% of those people because we don’t know how to interview. We miss 50% of great people 75% of the time we need them.

75% of the time we only hire people we like. 50% of those hired are the best who could be hired. We discount 75% of the absolute best because we don’t realize they are the best. 90% of the time we hire only people we feel “safe” in hiring.

80% of the people who read this will understand that only 50% of what I wrote is true. The other 50% is pretty close, and the rest of the 25% is right on the money, for at least 25% of the people.

In all the wisdom above, only one part is 100% true and needs no verification: Really Good People Are Hard To Find. If it is too easy to find what looks to be a good person, they’re not.

At least 75% of the time. The other 25% is close. Unless you are the government. Then it is a best estimate. If you are HR it is called “Best Practice”.